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‘It’s not true that charity begins at home. Charity begins in the boardroom, probably a plush boardroom surrounded by antiques, in a nice office, situated in a nice part of town. And, the men in suits sitting around them, because they are mostly men, have a combined income of millions of pounds……’

It is not my intent to detract from the good work done by many unpaid and dedicated people on behalf of charities. However, as we all too aware, everything in the global economy has become a business; why should charities be any different? There are countless well known charities which have become a Golden Goose to support wealthy people. Some, it could be argued are not even charities at all and are using charity status to gain tax breaks.

Follow the Money……

You don’t need to be a forensic accountant to see what I’m writing about. Recent figures show that the top 10 bosses of charities are paid almost £4million. Ten people, £4million; charity really does begin ‘at home’. I imagine the 25 year old Scotch in the drinks cabinet will be covered by the ‘company’ credit cards which also pay for the first class travel to the galas and conferences that are crucial in keeping the machine running. Remember, “Your £2 per month could stop Aliesha walking 8 miles a day to collect the contaminated water she needs to keep her and her family alive”; but not before she’s made the equivalent of 2,000,000,000 journeys just to keep the 25 year old Scotch topped up…..

Stealth Tactics……

In this era of ‘social’ media, information is available to those with the money to pay for it and charities love to know our income bracket, occupation, the value of our property and type of car we drive. Older people are generally more generous when giving to charity. Therefore, if you new their age, income, the types of charities they already give to and, sadly, they have been personally affected by illness, they can become a target. Now, I believe charities are a good thing but it makes me very uncomfortable to know that elderly relatives are being targeted. Companies and Charities have been warned about this behaviour and claim that it allows them to collect monies more efficiently. I can speak from personal experience; shortly after we lost a family member to Cancer we made a donation. Within weeks we had received requests from dozens of Cancer charities. My Mother gives to one of the Cat charities and she receives endless requests. It’s a competition sign you up.

Last year the equivalent of 200 targeted requests were made for ever man, woman and child in the UK……

Opportunities……

A whole new industry has formed around this new model of collecting which doubtless came from a firm of highly paid management consultants. It works like most business models today, using conpartmentmalisation. There are call centres dedicated to collecting, all for a fee of course. Marketing, research,, logistics, efficiency, the list is endless; all doing their bit for charity/a fee……

It’s a sad world when even charities are exploiting people, not for money to help others, but to make money to help themselves. The argument surrounding salaries goes as follows; a person in a similar position on the board of Fortune500 company can earn 10 times what they are paid by a charity. I’ll pause while we all laugh at the irony of that statement;e then point out that they are charities. There are Graduates and people with Ph. Ds in business management who would jump at the chance of earning 1/10th of the salaries paid to the old boy network, who probably have other jobs too……

If it Was Me……

Before I gave a penny to anyone I’d be checking the CEOs salary online. We gave £80 billion as individuals last year. It makes the States contribution look tiny in comparison which is why almost every ad break tells us 1 in 3 will get Cancer and half will suffer dementia. It’s only companies with big budgets and big profits we hear from the rest of the time. What a sad place the world has become when, what had admirable ambitions, has become another cog in the 3 percenters money making machinery, churning 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year…….

A Piece of the Pie……

What really worries me is the conditions created by the Military Industrial Complex. They create a great need for charitable interventions. I’m sure they were near the bottom of the list when 9/11 was at the planning stages but there’s a significantly larger slice of the pie available now……

Recently a lot of things that were buried have come back to haunt me again.

When I was a confused, frightened 15 year old boy I fell in reciprocated love for the first time ever. He was older than me, gorgeous, a football player and told me how much he loved me. There was only one thing that had to be kept a secret; that there was an us. He didn’t want anyone to know.

I was submissive to him. It felt like that’s what I should be. He didn’t hurt me and I enjoyed the sex and the feelings of butterflies whenever I thought about him. Life was great, I had escaped the fear of being found out and it didn’t matter that we were a secret. When we were alone nothing else in the world mattered. I was in love.

As time went on we maintained the secrecy, we had our own secret code to communicate and arrange our secret meetings (no instant messenger then).

Then, one night, we had arranged to meet at a pub but I had to stay away from him until the night was over. This was nothing new. The plan was simple. He would leave and we’d go in opposite directions and meet up at his bed-sit when the coast was clear. Everything was ‘normal’ when he came up to me on the way back from the loo, handed me the keys and told me to go. Change of plan, he’d be home soon.

Soon enough he was. I was undressed and couldn’t wait for just another night of passion. How wrong was I. It was clear something was wrong. But what? I had, apparently, spoken to somebody he didn’t approve of. Butterflies turned to fear. He had hold of me by the top of my arms, digging his nails in. I told him he was hurting me and I didn’t even know what I’d really done but found myself apologising. I tried to kiss him; he moved aside. Precisely what happened next is still a bit of a blur but he hit me in the stomach and I went down. Two, maybe three digs later, I was on the floor in tears. Then he raped me. I don’t think I actually said no. I was confused, crying and in a lot of pain. I just froze. After, I can remember being in bed facing away from him so he couldn’t see me cry. Every time he touched me a shiver went through me.

In the morning he got up and left as if nothing had happened. When he’d gone I got up and walked into the bathroom. In the mirror stood a devastated, crying mess. Bruises and nail marks on my arms, a huge bruise on my kidney and an intense pain; the result of two cracked ribs which acted as a reminder of what he could do, even six weeks later.

He came back, told me I shouldn’t have provoked him and I apologised again. How could I still love him? I don’t know but I did. I put up with his paranoia, temper and abuse for almost two years. I blamed myself.

And when it was over it was him who finished it and I still cried and begged him to stay with me.

It was a long time ago but not the last time. What was wrong with me? Was I so desperate to be loved I’d take anything inflicted on me.
It wouldn’t happen now and I would never treat anybody that way. I don’t even know why I’m saying this. I suppose it’s freed a skeleton from the past. Another piece of embarrassing history. He might even see it and think about the damaged he did to an already damaged boy. And, I still love him. How twisted is that?…

For legal purposes a dead body doesn’t belong to anyone & why should it. After all in life the right to self determination and autonomy are enshrined in multiple articles of international Human Rights Law and only under very rare circumstances can you be forced to do something against your will. So why does the ownership of a dead body matter? When your loved ones get the bill from the funeral directors & they want £5,000, (minus the headstone; another £1,000 at least) – that’s when……

So, why do we spend unbelievable amounts of money disposing of the dead? Tradition; predominantly as result of anachronous Christian doctrine, which the majority of intelligent people accept is nonsense but blindly follow anyway. A dead body is dead body; the transient shell of a conscious, thinking person. I’m not suggesting that the loss of a loved one should not be honoured & their life celebrated, but there is nothing to stop that happening without having to adhere to the usual inordinately expensive cost of a ‘traditional’ funeral. So, whose responsibility is it to pay the bill?

Usually, the family take care of the arrangements but they are under no obligation to do so. Lack of knowledge is what can make you unwittingly liable. Firstly, acting as the executor makes you automatically liable. Many people take on this role unknowingly. For example: your relative or friend dies. Liability is the last thing on your mind when you are in shock, devastated at your loss & in the surreal bubble that is the precursor to mourning. Even if there is a will naming you as the executor you are under no obligation to accept. But if you unwittingly handle any part of the process, such as registering the death, you become responsible. It is your right to simply say it has nothing to do with you and responsibility becomes a matter of public health. Responsibility becomes the duty of the state. They then make and pay for the arrangements; sometimes referred to as ‘a pauper’s funeral’. Although the term is an antiquated leftover from the 19th century, it does tend to put emotional pressure on people who are already in a delicate disposition……

Secondly, if you arrange the funeral you have entered into a legally binding contract with the funeral director, who can later sue for breach of contract if it turns out that the deceased assets do not cover the cost of the funeral. Not something that is made clear as you are whisked off into the room with the comfortable sofas and they begin the emotional manipulation by talking about your loved ones whilst writing down a long wish list, none of which is priced as you go. Only when you’ve made your choices does the calculator appear and, let’s face it, nobody’s going to start asking where they can skim off a few quid.

So, there you go. When I snuff it don’t have anything to do with me. Oh, and don’t do the sycophantic “What a fantastic bloke he was” bullshit. Tell it like it really was. In fact, don’t tell it at all……

‘Reach for the history books and they’ll tell you that slavery was abolished in the UK by the Slave Trade Act of 1807, driven by the unstoppable will-power of William Wilberforce. Well, almost……’

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

The Slave Trade Act of 1807 simply outlawed the transportation of slaves. It wasn’t until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act was passed; making the owning, buying or selling of slaves illegal. It is not a coincidence that 26 years separated the two acts. Most of the Parliamentarians of the day had slaves and given life expectancy most had exploited the full potential from the slaves they owned. So, what’s changed…..?

First we need to define precisely what a ‘slave’ is. There’s the meaning we all take for granted, of people imprisoned against their will, transported to ‘the colonies’ and forced to work for a ‘master’; all enforced by extreme brutality and violence metred out to anybody who didn’t tow the line. It is now part of our shameful past but still happens all over the world to this day.

There are other definitions which have more congruity with our lives today. The Oxford English Dictionary contains several. Here are the ones that are pertinent to this article:

A person who works hard without proper remuneration or appreciation.

A person who is completely dependent upon, or controlled by something.

A state of subjection.

Anybody who is a member of the plebeian proletariat, which is me and most of the people I know, falls into one, two or all three of the definitions given above. Here’s why.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that a single person with no dependents requires an income of £16,300p/y, after deductions, to meet their basic needs. No holidays, cars or HDTVs included; just survival. Therefore, you are a slave to your employer, who holds you in subjection by the necessity to survive. Worse still, that employer probably doesn’t even come close to meeting those basic needs, leaving many people dependent upon the Government for Tax Credits; which is effectively another way of admitting that British employers pay too little for you to survive, further enslaving you to the State. To add insult to injury many of those employers manage to ‘avoid’ paying taxes to HMRC……

Having taken into account your own position the chances are that you fit the definition of a slave, only the ball and chain has been replaced by the threat of withholding essential income.

This form of modern slavery is a very clever device which causes apathy amongst huge groups in society who apostatise issues they hold dear for fear of disenfranchisement by the State upon which they depend for their survival……

It is my personal belief that this ideology is not accidental. Only the other day two more MPs fell prey to a press sting where they told us how they could influence policy and trade ‘under the radar’, and how this was excellent value at £8K per day; more than an unemployed person is paid yearly. If it was 1715 instead of 2015 I dare say we would have adopted the French model and separate MPs heads from their bodies, but it’s a carefully built house of cards and the distraction of survival along with the threat of ‘Jihady John’, ISIS/ISL/IS, global warming and the astutely constructed financial instability from which they protect us, keeps the vassal status quo.

The basic fact is that we are enslaved by a system from which we are unable to escape, with the exception of Ray Mears and maybe Bear Grylls. The nepotism, quid pro quo and control of the ruling elite keeps us firmly in our place; slaves who keep the cabal in positions of power and wealth through meaningless elections. You are most probably a modern slave……

The victims of Jimmy Savile have now reached over 500 people, making him the most prolific paedophile that this country has ever known. With each new revelation in the media it becomes more and more apparent that this manipulative deviant managed to operate for 50 years without detection. This is the hardest part to understand, bearing in mind the number of police investigations and anecdotal stories that have come to light. With so many people expressing their concern at the time, surely those who knew about Savile must have crossed paths and, one would assume, an exponentially increasing catalogue of his behaviour would have accumulated becoming widely talked about within charities, the NHS and the BBC.

The proponents of this accumulated information may not have felt that they could approach someone in authority; partly due to a lack of hard evidence or because they felt it may harm their career prospects, attacking a celebrity icon in the zeitgeist of that era, but surely someone would have been compelled to ‘out’ him by catching him in the act. This doesn’t seem like something that would have been hard to do based on the stories that are surfacing now.

It is a tragic thought that some lone individual, or worse a cabal of executives high up in the BBC may have chosen not to actively pursue Savile instead turning a blind eye. At that time Savile’s audience was akin to that of Coronation Street back in the days when we only had 3 channels to watch. Could it be that the ‘yes’ men allowed it to happen in the same way the ‘yes’ men allowed Michael Jackson to share his bed with prepubesent boys. A case of not shooting the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s almost too twisted to imagine it happening but we have all seen the product of greed; it surrounds us every day……

All of this is pure speculation but it strikes me as extremely unlikey that such a prolific paedophile wasn’t ever caught in the act. With reference to the victims who did come forward at the time, they will have lived through their distress three times. The whole affair seems to have sex offenders crawling out from the celebrity woodwork. Stuart Hall from ‘It’s a Cock Out’ and Rolf Harris putting his Digery Doo where you Digery don’t……

Although completely unrelated but only one rung down from Savile are the seemingly immune politicians who steal from the public purse to the police officers who felt the need to shoot John Charles de Menenez in the head seven times, kill bystanders at protest marches and all get off scot free.

Some people would sell their own grandmother’s organs if they thought it would make them wealthier, so I wouldn’t put it past the BBC executives to have protected their main asset. Given the bullets that those mentioned above have been able to dodge the ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ proverb could have contributed to Savile’s ability to act as he did. If that is the case, I don’t know how the people who chose to do nothing can sleep at night……

‘We all love our mobiles, iPads and laptops and most of us would feel lost without them. We also care about our planet, support eco-friendly products and would use them if they met our needs. Everybody loves a bargain, so when the price of technology keeps on falling we upgrade, even if our device is perfectly adequate. It sounds like a panacea; cheap, accessible and green. But as the old saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is……’

We all know that global industries are not in business for pleasure. They have one goal and that is to return the maximum possible profits. So a penny saved by the consumer is a penny recouped from somewhere else and that usually involves a human cost along the way……

I am writing and administering this blog from a seven year old laptop and, with good housekeeping, it continues to function perfectly. In fact I cannot think of anything I can’t do that a new computer would make possible. The truth of the matter is that we suffer from ‘technology envy’ and the sleek new laptops and phones are more cosmetically satisfying than they are functionally better; but we want one anyway. This applies to TVs, fridges, coffee machines, cars and almost any gadget we own. To supply goods at discount prices savings have to be made……

Human Resources, and a ‘resource’ is what we are in the eyes of global industries, is one of the first lines of cost cutting which is why your technology is almost always made in a country with no public healthcare, dilapidated infrastructure, chronic poverty and corrupt officials. For it is in those countries that humans can be bought at the least cost. They work 16 hour days and the concept of health and safety doesn’t appear in the equation. There is no sick pay or paid holidays and the employees dare not challenge the bosses because they are replaceable by the next desperate person……

Many companies claim to monitor standards at their far eastern supplier but the reality is that they will be shown a specially set up part of a factory; clean, safe and air conditioned. If they interview employees they are too frightened to speak up. This was brought into sharp focus by the recent collapse of a factory that made clothing for many well known high street brands……

The second issue is caused by the technology itself. To make batteries that last longer, motors with more power and the materials that aid miniaturisation we often use what are known as ‘rare earth elements’ such as Boron and Neodymium. By an accident of geology rare earth elements are most common in third world economies. Extracting them requires yet more cheap manpower and extracting them can leave behind toxic chemicals; chemicals that developed nations have strict regulations regarding their disposal. Unscrupulous third world companies simply dump them on the ground or into rivers. Another unfortunate consequence of rare earth elements is their rarity. Hundreds of tons of earth may contain only a tiny amount of the desired element, therefore, extracting them causes the destruction of vast areas of important ecosystems……

So, the next time you’re thinking of upgrading to the latest sleek, brushed aluminium mobile phone or laptop, ask yourself if you really need it, because your new phone may be helping to shorten someone’s life, contributing to the extinction of plants and animals, and ultimately halting development of third world countries.

And all because multi-national global companies need to pay huge bonuses and increase profits. ‘Sustainable growth’ has to be one of histories most damaging and unrealistic oxymoron ever to have come from a comfortable, air conditioned, over staffed and detached boardroom since ‘think tanks’ came into existence……